Deliverability is a key metric for people and companies that send a large volume of electronic communications, such as email. In the case of email, for instance, deliveries delayed, sent to “junk” or “spam” folders or completely rejected because the receiving email server has flagged or blocked the sending mail server can cause significant problems and expense for email senders. The reputation of a sending email server is a key component that determines whether email from the sending email server will be allowed to be delivered at all, delivered on time, or delivered as “junk,” “spam,” or the like. Receiving email servers typically keep track of all email and where it comes from, and whether recipients open the email, click on links in the email, treat it as unwanted by, for example, marking it as “junk” or “spam”, or mark it as “not junk” or “not spam” in the event it is delivered to the recipient's “junk” or “spam” folder. Mail sending servers that establish a poor reputation for sending unsolicited and unwanted email may be flagged or blocked, which prevents future email from being delivered to the recipients' “inboxes,” delivered with images displayed, delivered on time, or delivered at all. It is known that email recipients or end-users are much more likely to respond positively to an email solicitation if that email is timely sent to the user's inbox with all content automatically displayed should the user so desire. Accordingly, it is critical for companies and people interested in delivering email effectively that they maintain a good reputation for their email-sending servers. If proper care is not taken to establish, maintain and protect a sender's good reputation, it may become difficult to send email to email-receiving servers, leading to lower conversion rates for solicitations, lower revenues and lower profits.
The reputations of email-sending servers are typically determined by an objective reputation score. The reputation score is typically a metric that measures the value of the email to the end user. Email-receiving servers typically determine the reputation score of email-sending servers dynamically; every individual email message from a single email-sending server is analyzed, and each subsequent piece of mail delivered from the same server impacts the reputation score for the server. It is possible for an email-sending server to establish a good reputation for a period of time and then start sending email that is flagged by the receiving server as inappropriate, which lowers the sending server's reputation score. Once a reputation score goes down and deliverability restricted, it is typically difficult to bring it back up again, since less email will be allowed in from the sending server.
Therefore, it is imperative that email-sending servers and other senders of electronic communications build and maintain their reputations to maximize the deliverability of their communications by minimizing the number of electronic communications sent to recipients that fail to interact with them or otherwise indicate that they are unwanted.